Mario Draghi, former Prime Minister of Italy and the former President of the European Central Bank, has put together the report titled “The Future of EU Competitiveness”. The report, released after multiple delays, expresses highly critical opinions regards to the EU’s competitiveness and more relevantly, its approach towards innovation, including the role of researchers and academia.
The reports highlights the issue with the lack of success in commercialising research and innovation. Despite recognising Europe’s strong position in basic research, it points out the weaknesses of the commercialisation pipeline. Draghi, after comparing the EU R&I landscape with other global actors China and United States, cites the lack of funds as the key issue, and thus proposes the doubling of the currently 200 billion EUR budget for the upcoming 10th EU Research Framework Programme (FP10). In addition to the lack of funds, he also proposes a stronger focus on supporting breakthrough innovation. Alongside issues with financing, he also lists the fragmented single market, as well as regulatory barriers to research amongst others as reasons why the EU fails to reach its potential in competitiveness.
The report contains proposals to tackle the deficit in innovation: it calls for a more coordinated approach towards R&I on the EU level, supporting fundamental research by extending the European Research Council’s grants and doubling its budget as well, in addition to realising initiatives that would help “inventors to become investors”, improving research commercialisation.
According to Science/Business, the R&I community’s reception of the report was positive, as it summarised and highlighted numerous sorrows researchers share with regards to the EU’s approach to R&I. However, it is also worth noting that to realise the report’s recommendations, a yet unprecedented addition of €750-800 billion EUR per year to the EU budget would be necessary – which some member states will very likely oppose.
